[R-G] Reporters Without Borders or without scruples

[Anthony Fenton]

Reporters Without Borders or without scruples

By Neville de Silva
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080504/Columns/thoughts.html
(Sri Lanka)

In most parts of the world except where authoritarianism prevents it,  
Press Freedom Day would have been celebrated yesterday. It is as it  
should be. One need not have to reiterate that democracy cannot and  
would not function as it should without an unbridled fourth estate.  
While media practitioners would welcome local and international  
support to preserve that freedom-a freedom that goes with  
responsibilities- there is a need to guard against some who present  
themselves as defenders of the media and the safety of journalists.  
Under cover of this laudable intention some of them pursue an agenda  
that is dictated by others, especially of those who provide the  
financial support to sustain such questionable organisations. Such  
financial support could come from foreign governments as well as  
foreign organisations that are conduits for government money. Through  
such indirect means foreign interests try to give a cover of  
legitimacy to their public activities.

Unfortunately the media that should guard itself against such  
infiltration and the usurpation of its interests and responsibilities  
by foreign organisations, have been generally remiss in maintaining  
the vigilance necessary to protect itself from manipulation. One such  
organisation is Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) or Reporters Without  
Borders which had the audacity to issue its list of “predators of  
press freedom” to coincide with last week’s event. If there is a  
predator of press freedom whose predatory work has been undertaken on  
behalf of its financial donors, some of them undisclosed until prised  
open, in different parts of the world, it is RSF.

The public would have better understood the manner in which RSF  
functions if our own media had given sufficient publicity to the  
recent statement by UNESCO. The Paris-based UN body withdrew its  
patronage for the International Day for freedom of expression on the  
Internet organised by RSF, also based in Paris. UNESCO said it  
withdrew patronage “following the publication of information by RSF  
which did not follow the arrangements agreed upon between the two  
organisations concerning the event.” “In its communications on the day  
RSF published material concerning a number of UNESCO’s Member States,  
which UNESCO had not been informed of and could not endorse.  
Furthermore UNESCO’s logo was placed in such a way as to indicate the  
Organisation’s support of the information presented,” the statement  
said.

One would have thought that the local media would have taken a keener  
interest in this because the RSF has regularly presented itself as a  
great defender of the interests of the media and journalists in Sri  
Lanka. If in doing so it has distorted situations and incidents and  
filed totally false reports it would not come as a surprise to those  
who have been studying the history of RSF duplicity, particularly in  
the last seven to eight years.

On 23rd March this column highlighted the false and tendentious report  
RSF distributed internationally headlined “Army seizes control of  
public SLRC Television” referring to the authorities shutting out some  
200 employees of Rupavahini who had threatened to go on strike that  
day. Curiously the French-language version made no mention of the army  
‘seizing’ control. “Sous controle de l’armee”, the headline said which  
is far from saying the army seized control. While both headlines were  
false and hinted at a coup of sorts, international researchers who  
have studied the work of RSF would know that this is how the Paris- 
based organisation acts in pursuit of political rather than media  
agendas. If the local media and researchers are interested in the ways  
of foreign-funded organisations that present themselves as arbiters of  
the human rights situations in small developing countries in  
particular, whose politics do not follow the path charted by foreign  
donors, would find it highly revealing to read what has been uncovered  
about the RSF.

On May 13 2005, French writer Sami Lamrani, a researcher at Sorbonne  
University published an article called “Reporters Without Borders  
Fraud.” It is useful quoting him at some length because it reflects  
what others, journalists and writers before and after him have  
observed. “The strong suspicions that have surrounded the dubious and  
partisan activities of Reporters Without Borders were not unfounded.  
For many years various critics have denounced the largely political  
activities of the Parisian entity, particularly with regard to Cuba  
and Venezuela whose characteristics that utilizes propaganda is  
obvious. The positions of RSF against the governments of Havana and  
Caracas are found in perfect correlation with the political and media  
war that Washington carries out against the Cuban and Venezuelan  
revolutionaries.”

“Finally the truth has come to light. Mr Robert Menard, secretary- 
general of RSF for twenty years, has confessed to receiving financing  
from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the organisation that  
depends on the US Department of State whose principal role is to  
promote the agendas of the White House for the entire world. Menard  
was very clear. “We indeed received money from the NED. And that  
hasn’t posed any problems.” If it posed no problem why was this  
donation not reflected in the accounts of RSF until some enterprising  
journalist researcher prised it out of RSF that was behaving oyster- 
like and keeping it tightly closed.

Writing in November 2007 in the “World Politics Review”, its  
contributing editor John Rosenthal states that until 2005, RSF made no  
mention of the fact that it was receiving financial support from the  
European Union. Rosenthal writes that RSF’s annual Press Freedom Index  
has named 17 European countries in the top 20. Says Rosenthal: “The  
performance of European countries in the RSF press freedom rankings is  
impressive. It becomes less impressive, however, when one knows the  
extent to which RSF depends for its financing upon European  
governments either directly or indirectly via the European Union. RSF  
is commonly referred to as a ‘non governmental organisation or NGO.”  
“But in the light of its financial dependence upon and close ties to,  
in particular, the French Government and above all, European  
institutions, RSF could be regarded as the very prototype of what  
might be better called a PGO, para-governmental organisation.” As in  
the curious difference in the headlines of the Sri Lanka story cited  
above, in the 2006 accounts of RSF there is some hanky-panky.  
Rosenthal points out that a line called “subsidies” that appears in  
the French version had mysteriously disappeared in the English  
version. There is plenty more about RSF, especially its political  
meddling and partisanship in the 2002 coup in Venezuela that tried to  
oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez.  
Unfortunately the lack of space does not permit me to deal with that  
aspect and other issues in this column.

But there is much in writings on RSF that should cause concern among  
policy makers and media persons at home. There might well be  
journalists who have been inveigled into the RSF embrace because it is  
seen by them as a respectable institution defending freedom of  
expression. But the facts that have been unearthed about the RSF by  
journalists and others including even conservative newspapers such as  
Le Figaro and the Los Angeles Times, should leave one questioning the  
authenticity of RSF’s stated intentions.

Just as there are serious questions about the financing of RSF one  
should also examine where some of our own organisations with similar  
objectives such as the Free Media Movement, receive their funding. If  
transparency is what they demand of others, it is best that they have  
it themselves to erase any lingering doubts that people might have  
about them. I remember in the old days it was alleged that American  
organisations such as Asia Foundation were actually front  
organisations of the CIA. Perhaps it was not true, I would not know.  
But if today some media organisations that present themselves as  
defenders of free media and journalists and receive funding from such  
organisations as the Asia Foundation it is best to dispel any  
misgivings by declaring any affiliations or receipt of funds.